Election Women

The influence of women and sex on a US election is at an unprecedented all-time high and not just because one of the candidates is a woman and the other an alleged serial groper.

One of Democrat Hillary Clinton’s closest aide’s Huma Abedin serves as vice chairwoman of Clinton’s campaign. She has done nothing wrong. But in the last week or so she has led the Federal Bureau of Investigations to refocus its attention on Clinton over alleged dodgy emails after Abedin’s husband was again revealed as a sexual predator.

Last week, less than a fortnight before the crucial poll next week on November 8, Abedin announced she was divorcing former US Congressman Anthony Weiner, from whom she was already separated, because of his continued sexting, which began in 2011.

The incident, dubbed “Weinergate” by the press, involved him using Twitter to send a link to a sexually suggestive picture of himself to a 21-year-old woman from Seattle, Washington.

The latest indiscretion, which resulted in a police investigation, involved allegedly engaging in sexting with a 15-year-old girl.

Devices owned by Weiner were seized as part of the investigation into this incident, and were later found to contain emails between him and Abedin that may be relevant to the Clinton email controversy which the FBI said in July had been discontinued without any charges being laid.

The latest revelations have been a godsend to Clinton’s Republican rival Donald Trump who has been under enormous pressure because of his vulgar descriptions of women and alleged record of unwanted sexual “attacks” on women going back decades.

Following the FBI announcement about the Weiner-Abedin emails, Trump gained some ground on Clinton in the polls although Clinton maintained an overall lead.

Clinton’s email woes go back to when she was appointed Secretary of State to current US President Barak Obama in 2009.

Shortly before she was sworn in Clinton set up an email server at her home in New York. She then relied on this server, home to the email address hdr22@clintonemail.com, for all her electronic correspondence – both work-related and personal – during her four years in office.

She also reportedly set up email addresses on the server for long-time aide, Abedin, and State Department Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills.

She did not use, or even activate, a state.gov email account, which would have been hosted on servers owned and managed by the US government.

Clinton’s email system became a national story the first week of March 2015, when the New York Times ran a front page article on the subject. The article said that the system “may have violated federal requirements” and was “alarming” to current and former government archive officials.

An FBI investigation initially concluded that no “reasonable prosecutor” would bring a criminal case against Mrs Clinton, but that she and her aides were “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information.

Now it says there is new evidence, although just what the new evidence consists of hasn’t as yet been revealed.

The damage has been done though, with Trump using the new revelations to bludgeon Clinton while reminding America of the illicit sex record of her husband Bill when he was President from 1993 to 2001.

The former First Lady has hit back at Trump repeatedly telling the American electorate of Trump’s denigration of women privately and publicly and decades of sex assault allegations including the alleged rape of a 13-year old girl.

What the girls at She Brisbane are so frustrated about is that Trump, Weiner and Bill Clinton’s past and current indiscretions are tainting these women, that are only associated by marriage. Such a shame that Hillary and Huma Abedin can not be seen as individuals.